The Parasites of European Tourism: Awful Restaurants in Top Spots

Image via Samuli Lintula, Wikipedia

For any of the cafés at the Piazza della Signoria, Florence,
expect to pay exorbitant prices.

The greatest problem with going on a tour of the main sites of a new and foreign city is lunch. Where do you go, when you’re hungry from exploring a city that you don’t know very well, you’re miles away from your hotel and you haven’t packed anything to take with you? Occasionally, you find yourself going to familiar fast-food chains just because you’ll know what to expect. But when in Paris, or Florence, or somewhere with a good reputation for food, do you really want to be eating at McDonalds? So you try having a look for a nice restaurant, or café to eat and here comes the real problem: those parasitic restaurateurs that live off of the good culinary reputation of a particular country or city or region to serve you rubbish on a plate and charge the world for it.

Such restaurants and cafés are always to be found in tourist hubs, a pub in Covent Garden, the bistro across from Notre Dame, or the Al Fresco café in Florence’s Piazza della Signoria. They survive because they get their traffic not from their own good reputation, but from the reputation of whatever tourist attraction that they are close to. As David Whitley of Grumpy Traveller has commented:

“They know they won’t get repeat trade, they know people on holiday fritter away money at a rate they’d not dream of at home, and they know that the odd upset customer is worth the gain.


“And they’re always the places where service is worst.”

But the corollary that no-one seems to notice about this parasitic practice is that the loser in the end (apart from the unhappy customer) is the reputation of the country or the place that is being so parasitically exploited in this way. So much so that, having visited Tuscany I can honestly tell you that although Florence is such a significant city in European history and although it has such great architecture and the Uffizi and Accademia are unmissable, the entire city is a giant tourist trap, and for the real Tuscan experience I would recommend nearby Lucca, which has its own splendid Piazzas, cathedrals and fountains and a significant and interesting history of its own.

And the real big-time loser in this parasitic practice is France. To the extent that you might find a columnist in Britain’s “The Independent” fatuously claim that British food is better than French. For an Australian who’d never been Paris, such a claim would be dismissed as ridiculous, just on reputation alone, even more so for an Australian whose experience of British cuisine was the pub-grub of north Hertfordshire. But for my part, as I had been to Paris, I could see that there was some credibility in the columnist’s claim. Unfortunately, France which, since at least the 50s has enjoyed a pre-eminent position in the culinary world, nowadays suffers from such a rash of mediocre restaurants that I can well imagine that around the world, everyday there are hordes of holidaymakers returning from France with a massive sense of disappointment at the much-vaunted “French cuisine” that they’d heard so much about.

Image via Wikipedia

A beautiful view from atop the Cathédrale Notre-Dame 
de Paris, but I'm sure that there aren't any great
restaurants to be seen! Tourist hubs like the Île de la
Cité are no-go zones for good food and good service.

For Paris in particular, the world’s most visited city, with 45 million tourists a year, it is a particular problem, and having visited the city four times, I still can’t recommend a restaurant for my readers for a mind-blowing French-food experience. For that, I would urge readers to visit l’Alchemiste in Saumur in the Loire Valley, a place I never would have found were it not for the recommendation of my hosts when staying at Château de Verrières.

Italian wine: "Probably tastes like vinegar" (So what hope for Australian?)

A snippet of French attitudes towards wine: Australian wines are popular in Britain - but in what esteem are they held in France? The opportunity to consult a French waiter presented itself when dining at a restaurant in Nice when we popped over for the February half-term break.

It wasn't one of those jolly little brasseries that have that typical bistro atmosphere so unique to France because Esther wanted to visit an upmarket place to enjoy pretentious French cuisine at it's best. Being Nice, it had a strong Italian influence, and the waiter serving me the Italian wine I ordered (the only wine that I could afford) disdainfully remarked (in English) that it probably tastes like vinegar - 'Italian wine's not that good'.

So later in the meal I braced myself and asked his opinion of Australian wine. His reply was that he didn't know - he'd never tasted it - but he thought he knew someone who might have tried it before. (Yes thought he knew someone who might have tried it - very re-assuring). Thus although popular with the un-discerning English, it would seem Australian wine has barely made a dent in France. And furthermore, as Australian wine-growing has such a strong Italian heritage, the waiter's disdain for Italian wines wouldn't bode well for the popularity of Australian wine either. But before the end of the meal, the waiter returned, he'd consulted his 'friend' who'd tried Australian wine - apparently "he says it's quite good".

Tentatively I would conclude, the base Australian attitude to winning at everything works. Sure it's crass and vulgar - like Ricky Ponting's team of sore losers and even worse winners. But perhaps through a trophy culture and lots of wine-tastings, Australian wine might surpass it's "humble" Italian origins. Although of course, like cosmopolitan Britain's "food culture" it's not built on a solid foundation of long-standing traditions. Australia doesn't do long-standing traditions; unless you want to count its history of racism or the decrepit old Labor party.

In comparison, I don't think Italian wine-makers would be particularly bothered that a waiter in France doesn't rate their wine; winning trophies isn't the reason why Italians make wine. Likewise although the French are universally acknowledged as the masters of wine-making, they are so not because that's a stated goal of French wine-makers; rather they are so because they have a long infatuation with wine that dates as far back as Julius Caesar's observation that it was known for a Gaul to trade a slave for a single amphora of wine. The French will continue to produce and drink their own wine regardless of how it is perceived by the outside world.

In that case will the "winning" attitude last? Or will Australian wine-making success, built on the shaky foundation of a 1980s fad for 'haute cuisine', fall as meteorically as it has risen?

Only time will tell...